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Waste crimes create social and economic issues. Offenders commit crime due to either a lack of awareness of waste law or the belief that there is a low risk of being caught and punished. OECD countries are using digital tools to improve their use of resources with the aim to promote compliance and detect violation of waste law. This paper reviews the types of waste crimes, their motivations, and opportunities for governments to use digital tools for their enforcement efforts. It finds that governments have thus far mainly focused on digitalising their data collection and their exchange of information with the public and partners. Further application of digital tools can improve the connection of these tools and test predictive analytical tools such as artificial intelligence systems.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented global economic downturn, affecting productivity, business dynamics, and digital technology adoption. Using a comprehensive commercial database from Spiceworks Ziff Davis, this study analyses the firm-level drivers of digitalisation during the pandemic across 20 European countries. The findings show that a considerable share of firms introduced new digital technologies during the COVID-19 crisis. Notably, firms that were larger, more digitalised, and more productive before the pandemic were more likely to introduce new digital technologies in 2020 and 2021. Additionally, firms with pre-existing complementary technologies had a higher likelihood of adopting digital applications that gained momentum during the pandemic (such as digital commerce, collaborative software, cloud, and analytics). These patterns may increase polarisation among the best-performing firms and the rest of the business population. Public policy can play a key role in fostering an inclusive digital transformation in the post-pandemic era.
This paper reviews the digital tools developed by the insurance industry to improve the health and wellness of policyholders. These tools are said to offer a win-win: better health for policyholders and reduced claims for insurers. Many tools apply lessons from behavioural economics by seeking to influence policyholder behaviour and overcome short-term barriers to change. This paper identifies issues and challenges, such as data privacy and security, safety risks, data quality, overall effectiveness, and relevant policy and regulatory frameworks.
Demographic change brings complex challenges to the economic, social, and environmental systems of cities, with its asymmetric, overlapping, and compounded impacts across people and places. This paper analyses the main demographic trends and challenges in cities across OECD countries, with a focus on G7 cities. It disentangles trends and challenges across three distinct, yet interrelated, dynamics: i) ageing population and decreasing household size in cities (for instance, the number of older adults in cities increased by 2.4% per year in G7 countries between 2008 and 2018), ii) city population growth or decline (for instance, 20% of cities across OECD countries experienced population decline between 2001 and 2021), and iii) spatial segregation within cities (for instance, commuting zones of metropolitan areas are ageing faster than inner cities). Based on the evidence-based analyses, the paper provides policy insights to address the impacts of demographic change and to build more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient cities and urban systems, with city-specific examples.
Preliminary findings from the paper served as input to the G7 Ministerial Meeting on Sustainable Urban Development (7-9 July 2023, Takamatsu, Japan) under the G7 Japanese Presidency.
Digital technologies are having a profound impact on economies, labour markets and societies. They also have the potential to transform government, by enabling the implementation of more accessible and effective services. To support a shift towards digital government, investment is needed in developing the skills of civil servants. This paper reviews good practices across OECD countries to foster skills for digital government. It presents different approaches in public administration to organising training activities as well as opportunities for informal learning. It also provides insights into how relevant skills can be identified through competence frameworks, how they can be assessed, and how learning opportunities can be evaluated.
This study investigates the capacity of governments to reallocate spending across different functions of the government. It mobilises the COFOG dataset for the period 1996 - 2017, which allows comparing public spending mixes at detailed levels in ways that are consistent across countries and over time.
Three main empirical findings are established. Firstly, countries differ in their propensity to reallocate public spending across functions and countries that reallocate more are also countries with sounder governance and tighter fiscal rules in place. Secondly, obstacles to reallocation are identified, with governments avoiding nominal cuts, especially in health and social expenditures. Thirdly, while the analysis underlines some degree of convergence among OECD countries in terms of public spending allocation, this convergence is not universal. A cluster of Nordic countries persists, and Greece is identified as diverging from the rest of countries included in the sample.
This paper explores the opportunities and challenges linked to a possible use of deliberative democracy processes in Lebanon. It looks at the viability and feasibility of such initiatives, which are not prevalent in the country, by identifying the main impediments to their initiation and implementation, the different formats they could take, and the expected impact. It discusses how deliberative democracy could complement and diversify the democratic tools available to Lebanese actors and thus strengthen citizens’ ability to participate in public life. The aim of the paper is to encourage an initial discussion on this topic, raise awareness about its potential to contribute to democratic governance and respond to the demand of Lebanese actors interested in pursuing deliberative democracy efforts.
This paper describes an algorithm, “DoomBot”, which selects parsimonious models to predict downturns over different quarterly horizons covering the ensuing two years for 20 OECD countries. The models are country- and horizon-specific and are automatically updated as the estimation sample period is extended, so facilitating out-of-sample evaluation of the algorithm. A limited combination of explanatory variables is chosen from a much larger pool of potential variables that include those that have been most useful in predicting downturns in previous OECD work. The most frequently selected variables are financial variables, especially those relating to credit and house prices, but also include equity prices and various measures of interest rates (such as the slope of the yield curve). Business cycle variables -- survey measure of capacity utilisation, industrial production, GDP and unemployment -- are also selected, but more frequently at very short horizons. The variables selected do not just relate to the domestic economy of the country being considered, but also international aggregates, consistent with findings from previous OECD work. The in-sample fit of the models is very good on standard performance metrics, although the out-of-sample performance is less impressive. The models do, however, provide a clear out-of-sample early warning of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), especially when considered collectively, although they do generate ‘false alarms’ just ahead of the crisis. The models are less good at predicting the euro area crisis out-of-sample, but it is clear from the evolution of the choice of variables that the algorithm learns from this episode, for example through the more frequent selection of a variable measuring euro area sovereign bond spreads. The latest out-of-sample predictions made in mid-2023, suggest the probability of a downturn is at its greatest and most widespread since the GFC, with the largest contributions to such risks coming from house prices, interest rate developments (as measured by the slope of the yield curve and the rapidity of the change in short rates) and oil prices. On the other hand, warning signals from business cycle variables and equity prices, which are often good downturn predictors at short horizons, are conspicuously absent.
Stimulus packages adopted following the COVID-19 pandemic – such as the US Inflation Reduction Act and NextGenerationEU - have been presented as an opportunity to “build back better” and accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy while re-igniting the economy. But this revival of industrial policy has also raised concerns about the potential for a global green subsidy war. OECD analysed funding measures worth USD 1.3 trillion announced around the world in 2020-21 to support development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies. These measures can trigger substantial greenhouse gas emissions reductions while boosting the growth of the clean tech sector in all regions and reducing dependence over fossil fuel imports. This policy brief summarises key findings from our analysis and offers additional recommendations to policymakers.
The cardiovascular system is the first functional organ system to develop in the vertebrate embryo, reflecting its critical role during normal development and pregnancy. This Adverse Outcome Pathway focuses on the regulation and disruption of vasculogenesis-angiogenesis during embryonic development via disruption of the Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) signaling pathway. This pathway is a critical regulatory system for assembly of embryonic blood vessels. Genetic studies have shown that perturbing the VEGF signaling system can invoke varying degrees of adverse consequences, ranging from congenital angiodysplasia to fetal malformations and embryolethality. This AOP is referred to as AOP 43 in the Collaborative Adverse Outcome Pathway Wiki (AOP-Wiki).
Simplified nutrition labelling policies provide supplementary nutritional information in an easy-to-understand label displayed on food products at the front-of-pack. Forty-four countries have introduced these types of labelling schemes with a view to promoting positive public health outcomes. Preliminary insights on the impact of these schemes show that they can influence reformulation efforts by the food industry as well as consumers’ purchasing decisions. The schemes differ, however, across several dimensions including implementation methods (voluntary or mandatory), the extent to which they provide consumers with nutrient information versus nutrition advice, the conveyed message, targeted products, design and appearance, and accompanying national policy mix. Their rapid proliferation across the world has led to a diversity of schemes which can have implications for private sector decisions and trade. Mechanisms to improve the availability of information and reduce administrative hurdles should be considered in order to improve the integration and use of such schemes, and to facilitate trade. Improving consistency across the nutrient criteria that underpin the different schemes could be considered when reviews are undertaken, especially at the regional level.
The 2018 OECD report Pharmaceutical Innovation and Access to Medicines noted that public debates about pharmaceutical policy are often marked by a lack of authoritative and commonly accepted information supporting the arguments of the stakeholders involved. A set of agreed indicators would facilitate better informed, more fact-based pharmaceutical policy debates to benefit all stakeholders, including the general public, policy makers, and the industry itself, and could help restore and strengthen trust among them. As part of its broader work agenda on “Increasing the transparency of pharmaceutical markets to inform policies”, the OECD undertook a comprehensive analysis to evaluate the feasibility of establishing a set of core indicators. The selection of indicators was guided by the principle that health policy aims to improve population health, and that access to effective medicines produced by a viable industry is essential to achieving that objective. To help policy makers understand how financial resources in the pharmaceutical industry contribute to the research and development of effective products in areas of need, indicators should cover three domains: inputs, including financial flows into the industry; activity, including financial performance and R&D expenditure and activity; and outputs, capturing product outflows and benefit to health systems. This paper presents the key findings on the feasibility of populating indicators to address the input and activity domains within this framework.
Digital technologies can be used to support the inclusion of diverse student groups in education in a number of ways including enhancing accessibility of educational content, increasing personalisation and providing distance learning opportunities, as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, persistent digital inequalities can undermine digital equity and inclusion and equity and inclusion in education generally, particularly for the most disadvantaged students. This paper explores the themes of digital equity and inclusion, and maps some of the policies and practices adopted in OECD countries for the equitable and inclusive use of digital tools in education. It highlights the importance of inclusive design and implementation of digital technologies, as well as the need for education systems to focus on capacity building such as teacher training, as well as adequate resourcing of digital tools. It discusses advantages and disadvantages of different approaches, and concludes by highlighting research and policy gaps.
This study investigates whether English formal instruction and a number of teaching practices are more strongly associated with reading or listening English skills, using data from a large-scale assessment of English skills among 14- and 15-year-olds in 15 European education systems in 2012. The results indicate that the skill difference between reading and listening skills is positively associated with: more years spent learning English in school; more hours of current English instruction; and even indicators of quality of English instruction. In addition, the use of different teaching materials and the emphasis put on oral skills in the classroom are also associated with the difference between reading and listening skills. These results are based on a methodology developed specifically for this study, and they confirm the usefulness of separately measuring foreign language skills for policy analysis.
This work delves into the liquidations mechanism inherent in Decentralised Finance (DeFi) lending protocols and the connection between liquidations and price volatility in decentralised exchanges (DEXs). The analysis employs transactional data of three of the largest DeFi lending protocols and provides evidence of a positive relation between liquidations and post-liquidations price volatility across the main DEX pools. Without directly observing the behaviour of liquidators, these findings indirectly indicate that liquidators require market liquidity to carry out large liquidations and affect market conditions while doing so.
This paper provides evidence on the effects of digitalisation on the labour market in Slovenia using a unique dataset of Slovenian workers and firms for the years 2016 to 2020. Results show that at the firm level, digitalisation – measured in terms of ICT investment, is associated with positive and statistically significant effects on employment. However, job growth is not evenly distributed: High-skilled workers and younger workers benefit the most from employment gains, whereas there is little to no employment increases for low- and medium-skilled workers and older workers aged 50 or more. Furthermore, employment effects from digitalisation are strongest for private manufacturing firms. In contrast, ICT investment by state-owned firms is not associated with employment gains.
The need to rapidly decarbonise economies raises questions about whether countries’ workforces possess the requisite skills to achieve the net zero transition as well as the capacity to redeploy workers from “brown” to “green” jobs. This paper applies a task-based framework to granular data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and country-specific employment sources to generate new indicators of the green skills structure of labour markets for a large number of OECD countries and non-OECD EU countries. Significant cross-country differences emerge in the underlying supply of green skill and the potential of economies to reallocate brown job workers to green jobs within their broad occupation categories. In a majority of detailed brown occupations, workers have in principle the necessary skills to transition to green jobs, with the exception of those in production occupations, who may require more extensive re-skilling. In contrast, workers from most highly automatable occupations are generally not found to have the sufficient skills to transition to green jobs, suggesting more limited scope for the net-zero transition to reinstate labour displaced by automation.
Fiscal spending policies adopted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have been presented as a unique opportunity to “build back better” and re-ignite the economy while accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. This paper analyses 1 166 funding measures announced by 51 countries and the European Union in 2020-21 to support development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies. These measures – amounting to USD 1.29 trillion – can make an important contribution to filling the climate investment gap, particularly in emerging technologies such as carbon capture, usage and storage and green hydrogen. A modelling analysis suggests that they could have large impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and bring about significant co-benefits in terms of clean sectors’ output growth and reductions in fossil fuel imports.
This paper explores the nexus between decarbonisation and intergovernmental fiscal relations, focusing on related challenges and reform options. It highlights the significant role of subnational governments in tackling climate change. Subnational and national governments share responsibilities in areas such as taxation, spending and regulation pertaining to environmental protection, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation, which calls for effective intergovernmental co-operation to align policy objectives and implementation strategies. The paper outlines decarbonisation requirements across sectors and discusses subnational government involvement in service delivery, investment, revenue generation and regulatory frameworks. Policy options to strengthen subnational contributions to national decarbonisation goals are presented. While focusing primarily on OECD countries, the paper acknowledges the need for improved information on subnational decarbonisation efforts in both advanced and developing countries.